German Patent Application No. 198 23 623.9 describes ball-and-wedge bonding methods in which additional retaining bonds are provided. The retaining bonds reinforce the wedge contacting of the wire connections, and either they themselves constitute a further wire connection between the wedge position that is to be reinforced (which represents the ball position for the retaining bond) and a further wedge position, or alternatively, in a special embodiment, the retaining bonds are attached only on the wedge position of the wire connection. The position of retaining bonds was hitherto defined by indicating ball and wedge positions, analogously to the indication of the ball and wedge positions of the actual wire connections. Retaining bonds are thus treated like wire connections, i.e. the position values of the wire connections of the retaining bonds are stored sequentially without differentiation, for example in an electronic memory. This method proves inflexible if the number of retaining bonds required changes from one manufacturing lot to another, since because of the lack of information about the assignment of retaining bonds to the respective wire connection for each lot, a complete program with all position data must be stored.